Source: Press Agency of Unioncamere

Venice, 19 June 2008 - Unioncamere Veneto, in collaboration with Veneto Region – Ufficio Distretti ¹, organized the workshop “University to Business: USA and Veneto compared in order to promote transatlantic cooperation”.

Illustrious speakers took part in the seminar. Among them, there were Italian and American teachers and professionals working in technology transfer both in the public and private sectors, within or outside the University.

Knowledge transfer reached a high effectiveness in the U.S.A., thanks to its enterprises and academic world, which highly prize patents and know-how.
 
The technology transfer system in the U.S.A. is moreover supported by legislative and financial instruments that facilitate and spur enterprises to acquire innovation.

This is the summary of what emerged from the speeches by professor Clifford Gross, Ph. D. Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of UTEK Corporation in Tampa, Florida, and by professor Donatas Tijunelis, from the Illinois Institute of Technology of Chicago.

As for Italy, it’s a long way to go still in order to achieve a “U2B” system similar to the American one, but we are laying the foundations to support such a process by means of a more and more structured institutional network to transfer knowledge and technology.
 
This point was discussed by professor Giorgio Simonetto, president of Veneto Innovazione, who illustrated the current situation and future prospects. At the European level, the latter are above all represented by the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), a European Commission’s initiative to assist businesses and innovation.

The EEN network is represented by the Consorzio Friend Europe, that Unioncamere supports as coordinating partner.

Also the Italian academic world is committed to enabling enterprises to innovate and grow.

Within Veneto region, Padua university is an example of excellence thanks to a new tool used for the transfer of research results: this achievement was reported by Mr. Andrea Berti, manager of the Technology Transfer Department of Padua university. It’s called Uni2B and it is an online tool (www.uni2b.it) that makes use of a language similar to that of businesses in terms of pragmatism, thus granting access to the results of university research.